Comment pubs.acs.org/est
Cite This: Environ. Sci. Technol. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
Lending an Eye to a Beleaguered Guardian of the Environment
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the assertion that the nation’s air is already too clean. The remaining new advisory board members include consultants, employees of oil companies, staff from the American Chemistry Council (a group that has long sought to influence EPA regulations) and government officials from states with reputations for less stringent environmental regulations. I am hopeful that the new SAB members will abide by the terms of their appointment “to give independent advice and to represent themselves only and no other organization or group”. Nonetheless, valid questions have been raised about the ability of the new appointees to render unbiased decisions by using the most advanced and credible science. We simply will not know whether or not the process has been compromised until the peer review groups get back to work. The Administrator may have closed one of the EPA’s eyes, but that does not mean that we simply wait and hope that the new board will live up to their charge of providing high-quality, unbiased analysis. All documents under consideration by the boards and panels are available for review. As part of this process, the agency is required to respond to public comments made by outside groups during the review process. To ensure a skeptical public that the EPA’s advisory boards and panels are conducting unbiased analyses that draw upon the full range of necessary expertise, the research community must fill the void. As a first step, the Association of Environmental Engineering & Science Professors (AEESP) has established a committee to review documents put in front of the EPA boards, with a focus on the Drinking Water and Environmental Engineering Science Advisory Board Subcommittees. The AEESP review team includes experts who served on these subcommittees during previous administrations as well as distinguished experts drawn from the AEESP membership. Their comments will help the public determine if the process has been compromised. I encourage other professional societies with expertise relevant to other subcommittees in areas like ecology, toxicology and economics, to initiate similar processes. Researchers who are not affiliated with organizations that are contributing comments can also take part in the review process by submitting comments directly to the EPA. Over the past 45 years, the U.S. EPA has protected the public and the environment by developing a regulatory framework that has been emulated around the world. The research community has played an important role in this process by providing peer review of the science underpinning the agency’s regulations and policies. Over the decades, politicians have sought to influence the agency by adjusting its budget and redirecting its internal priorities, but they have never attempted to interfere with the scientific peer review process. To maintain the legitimacy of this critical activity, the research community has an obligation to lend an eye to a beleaguered guardian of the environment.
ne eye is all a person needs to see. But a person with only one eye lacks depth perception. This fall, United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt took his agency in a direction that effectively closed one of its eyes. By precluding researchers currently receiving EPA funding from serving on the agency’s various science advisory boards, declining to reappoint board members to their expected second terms and replacing them with experts working for industry and state agencies that favor looser environmental regulations, Mr. Pruitt narrowed the perspective of the agency and undermined the credibility of an oversight process that has had bipartisan support during six previous administrations. Mr. Pruitt’s stated reason for barring EPA-funded researchers from service was that they could not be objective about issues that could possibly affect their future funding prospects. As anyone who has ever served on a government panel subjected to Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) rules can attest, an extensive financial vetting and ethics training process is used to ensure that panel members are recused from issues in which they have real or perceived conflicts of interest. These rules, which were intended to prevent the situation that Mr. Pruitt claimed could compromise the review process, apply equally to academic researchers and experts from industry and government. Mr. Pruitt offered no examples of prior failures in the policy nor did he explain why the flawed policy prevents industry scientists from succumbing to bias. The assertion that the nation’s leading researchers temper their analyses to suit their personal opinions while industry and government scientists remain objective simply lacks credibility. A related explanation for the reshufflingthat experts from outside of academia are underrepresented on EPA advisory panelsalso rings false. Approximately a third of the board members who were not reappointed came from outside of academia. They included experts from ExxonMobil, The Dow Chemical Company, and the Texas Water Development Board. The industry and government members who were purged had been appointed because they brought technical insights into the peer review process that might not be evident to academic researchers, such as the likelihood that a new regulation could be implemented. Nonetheless, the new practice of skewing board membership away from the academic world is ill advised because the technical expertise of industry and government members is not well suited for scientific peer review. Prominent industry researchers and state government employees are busy people who usually dedicate much less of their time to keeping up with the latest peer-reviewed research than their academic counterparts. Advisory panels lacking a critical mass of academics would be more accurately characterized as interested party feedback groups instead of science advisory boards. Academic experts appointed by the previous administration are still serving on the advisory boards, but within two years it is likely that few credible academic advisors will remain. Four of the 20 newly appointed advisory board members have academic affiliations. Among them, the credibility of one has already been questioned due to his controversial public statements, including © XXXX American Chemical Society
David Sedlak, Editor-in-Chief
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.7b06119 Environ. Sci. Technol. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
Comment
Environmental Science & Technology
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS. The author declares no competing financial interest.
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.7b06119 Environ. Sci. Technol. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
